Thursday, June 17, 2010

When you've got a lot of veggies from the farmers market or your CSA it seems the two easiest dishes to fall back on are pizza & stir-fry. They are both things that you can can really play with whatever you have on hand & usually end up with something pretty tasty. Ok, not every combination is a success like my stir-fry last night of chicken, radishes & beet greens in a honey/soy sauce, um yeah, not my favorite. What was I thinking? So, let's talk about a combination that did work, wonderfully, if I do say so myself, this pizza.Matt is in Silicon Valley for work & enjoying dinner at places like Amber India, jealous! So, I'm at home making single girl meals for myself. Luckily, this pizza was good enough that I don't feel bad about not getting butter chicken at Amber, well not too bad anyway.

This is really not much of a recipe, just an idea for a combination of flavors that were really tasty together. The potato & beet are boiled a little before adding them to the pizza so they come out of the oven super soft & tender. The beets add a sweetness to the pizza that plays nicely against the garlic scapes & onions. I love the colors of this pizza, the red skin of the new potato, the purple beet, the green spinach all against that golden brown cheese. I've sized the recipe for our favorite pizza crust down to feed one person which is perfect for those solo nights.

Mix the 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil with the warm water. Stir in the yeast then the salt & wheat bran. Stir in the flour until you can't stir anymore with a spoon. Knead the dough until it is smooth & elastic, about 10 minutes. If the dough is sticky add more flour a little at a time.

Put a little olive oil in the bottom of the bowl. Put the dough in & turn it to coat with the oil. Cover & let sit until double in size, about 2 hours.

Boil the potato & beet in pot of boiling water until just starting to get tender, 5 - 10 minutes. I did them separately to keep the potato from turning pink. Let cool until you can handle them then cut into 1/8 inch slices.

Grease a baking sheet with olive oil. Spread the dough out on the sheet into desired shape.

Cover the dough with the mozzarella & then sprinkle with parmesan. Top the cheese with the spinach leaves, potatoes, beets, garlic scapes & onion. Sprinkle with thyme leaves & salt.